California’s lengthening drought is focusing new attention on sustainable landscaping, as homeowners try to balance maintaining an attractive yard with the critical need to conserve water.

Sustainable landscaping is much more than simply choosing a desert motif and packing your yard with cacti and succulents. It includes lawn-care practices that are sensitive to the environment while delivering surprising health benefits.

Environmentally friendly landscapes can cool the area around homes and office buildings, reduce air pollution and dust, build healthy soil, reduce runoff and erosion, attract wildlife, and produce oxygen.

This contemporary landscape by Santa Monica landscape Architects & Designers features furcraea macdougalli in the back bed and festuca glauca in the foreground.  Both examples of drought resistant planting, aesthetically pleasing to the eye when contrasted with the gravel path and whitewashed exterior wall.

This dry garden is both colorful and drought resistant.  Designed by Bainbridge Island Landscape Architects and Landscape Designers Bliss Garden Design the planted beds surrounding the flagstone patio pool perimeter provides a variety of color, texture and plant types. Peppering the cool water feature with height variations for visual dimension.